The King Slayer Part 25

I throw back the tapestry. Yet another snap and Nicholas advances on me, lips curled in something that looks like amus.e.m.e.nt. I don't look at him, I don't acknowledge him. Instead, I turn to Blackwell.

"Is that all?" I taunt. "You're the most powerful wizard in Anglia, and that's all you can do? Turn puppeteer before blowing out the windows?" I allow myself a wide, feigned smile. "First you send Fulke after me, now this. Once again, you insult me."

Engaging him is a gamble, a liability. But if I can tempt him into using his power, it will show me what he's got left, using up what he's got left. I may be empty of weapons, but I'm not empty of wit.

Blackwell gleams at me. "You always were one of my best witch hunters."

"Yes," I say. "I was."

There's no snap. No ministration. He throws his own arms up this time.

And the sky comes down.

The vaulted ceiling of the music room cracks; ma.s.sive shards splinter and plummet to the floor. Falling lumber tears the tapestry from its moorings; the heavy cloth falls on top of me and I hold it over me like a shield. Marcus and Nicholas stand watching me, unharmed: The air around them is clear.

I run through the room, dodging falling timber to try to reach my discarded weapons. My tapestry snags on something along the floor; it's yanked off my head. I free it but not before a splinter of wood, sharp as a knife, slices through my forearm, through skin and bone, all the way through to the other side. I gasp, stumble to one knee, rip it out. Blood pours down my arm, drips through my fingers. I press my hand to stanch the wound; press down my feelings to stanch the pain.

The roof is open to the sky now, no longer blue and clear as it was when I arrived, but choked with a swirl of black rumbling clouds rolling in like a band of horses. Blackwell flicks his hand and with a clap and a roar the clouds open up, a waterfall of rain pouring in through the open roof.

I spot a gleam of steel beneath the tinder. A knife or a sword, I can't tell. I drop to my hands and knees, scrabble through the dust, the wood, until finally I reach it. It's a knife, but only one. I grasp the hilt. Spin around. Through the rain I see his outline, as black and thunderous as the clouds above. I pull back, take aim: the s.p.a.ce right between his eyes.

I will not miss.

Then: an earsplitting crack, a blinding flash. Lightning. It tears into me, spears me to the floor; I feel as if I'm on fire. In the middle of the pyre at Tyburn, heat and smoke and lit from within by searing-hot pain that rain does not abate, and I begin to scream.

"Stop."

At the sound of his voice, the recognition of it, everything ceases. The rain, the lightning, but not the pain. I'm pinned to the floor by it. I can't move, I can't think. But I can see. Him. Them. Standing in the doorway of the splintered, broken room: Caleb in black, and in his grip, finally-Nicholas might say inevitably-is John.

"STOP," JOHN SAYS AGAIN. He starts toward me, but Caleb holds him back. "Let her be."

"You don't command me." Blackwell's voice has taken on a clipped edge, one of authority and triumph.

"I have something you need," John says. "If you want it, then you'll do what I say."

Blackwell chuckles. "Rather ridiculous request, don't you think? But I'll acquiesce. I'll let her be, until the time it takes to kill you. What I do to her after that will no longer be your concern."

"If you think she'll allow you to do anything to her, you don't know her as well as I do."

A lewd, twisted grin. "I'm sure I don't."

John's eyes haven't left me since he entered the room. To others, his careful expression may read as fear. But only I know him enough to know it's determination. He's determined to do this. To give himself to Blackwell, to die for him, to allow him to become immortal. I don't understand, and I don't want to.

I turn from him to Blackwell. Get to my feet, slowly. Raise my arm, the one still holding the blade, and once again take trembling aim.

"Elizabeth." John's voice, a whisper, rings through the room like a shout. "Don't make the end harder than it has to be."

This: the end. What John planned for all along, what Nicholas planned. Never mind what I planned: scheming and lying and stealing to make sure it didn't. Even so, I drop the knife and it falls to the floor, a thud among the rubble.

Blackwell's tangled, destroyed eye flicks to John. "Confidence, determination, fearlessness." His voice is a drawl. "You possess all the qualities I value in my men, despite your allegiance. At the very least, you appear to have been a competent steward for my power." A pause. "I'm curious. What did it do for you? This power?"

There's so much John could say to this: too much. But his reply lies only in his disdain. "Nothing," he says. "It did nothing for me."

The levity drops from Blackwell's face, and he turns back to Caleb. "Did he put up a fight?"

"He was trying to escape," Caleb replies. "With the rest of their army. They're retreating."

"Retreating," Blackwell repeats, his voice a satisfied purr. "And my nephew?"

"Dead." Caleb shrugs. "I saw to that myself. He is dead, and you are king."

I expect Blackwell to revel in this news. To eat it, to drink it. Instead, his eyes narrow and he says in a voice full of silent rage, "I am king. I have always been king."

A pause. Then Caleb sketches a deep bow. "Majesty."

John, escaping. Malcolm, dead. None of this rings true to me. John wouldn't turn from a fight; he would die before he would do that. As for death, Keagan would never have allowed Malcolm's. Not without some sign of a fight, of blood or of fire, and Caleb shows neither, nothing more than the singed hair he wore earlier.

But then I see the skill in Caleb's reply to Blackwell's questions. He gave him an answer, but he didn't tell him what he really wanted to know. And Blackwell never commanded him to be truthful. It's the things a pater doesn't ask that can be taken advantage of. Once more, Schuyler's words echo in my head.

Something is happening, I don't know what. I turn to John, then to Caleb to try to glean something from their faces. But they both look away, ahead, anywhere but at me.

Blackwell snaps his fingers and on command, Nicholas steps to his side.

"Begin the preparations."

Nicholas holds out a hand, murmuring under his breath. Embers begin to glow beneath the rubble strewn along the floor, and as Nicholas waves his hand, his movement coaxes the nascent flame until it begins to roar, cracking and spitting and smoking.

Marcus steps forward, reaches into his cloak, pa.s.ses the contents to Blackwell. A scattering of salt, a clutch of herbs, a skin of water set to mark the cardinal points north, east, west. A bundle of thin, rough-hewn candles lit from the fire on the floor. A single one set south, four more to mark the intercardinal directions: an eight-pointed star.

I know what happens next.

And it happens so fast.

Nicholas, now immobile in Marcus's grip, dragged to the center of the star. Blackwell beside him, a knife in his hand. A glint of steel, a repressed grunt of pain, and blood-still more blood-to flood the rest of his ivory robes. Nicholas slumps to the floor, dead. A sacrifice.

I'm too horrified to even make a sound.

Blackwell reaches for his scabbard, and with a song against the leather he slides it out, the same d.a.m.ned blade that's etched in duplicate on the badge on his sleeve: the Azoth. This time, it doesn't call to me. This time, it repels me. I want nothing more than to see it-its curse and its power-destroyed.

Blackwell begins chanting. His voice, the only one in the room this time, is clear, and I can hear every word:

I am old, weak, and sick; fire torments me;

Death rends my flesh and breaks my bones.

My soul and spirit have abandoned me; In my body is found salt, sulfur, and mercury.

Let them first be distilled, separated, purified; That they will be trans.m.u.ted and reborn, Through Opus Magnum; the greatest of all works; The circle closes its end.

The emeralds embedded in the Azoth's hilt begin to wink brightly, frantically, as if they understand the change that is about to occur.

"You." Blackwell gestures to John, still in Caleb's grip.

"Don't!" I shout, finding my voice. "Don't do this. Don't-" I lunge for him, for them, just as Blackwell raises his hand, and a shard of gla.s.s flies across the room and slices into my face.

"Elizabeth!" John shouts my name as I gasp, pressing a hand to my face. The gla.s.s, it's only skimmed me: a long cut across my cheek that stings and bleeds but a little, though it stands as a warning. "Don't," he says. "Please."

"Okay," I say. "Okay." I try to be as brave as he is but I am not. Everything I did, all of it, was for naught. Saving Nicholas, only to have him killed in front of us. Saving John, only to have him offered up like a lamb for slaughter. The two of them saving me-not once but twice-but without the charm of the third.

Caleb brings John forward, to the center of the star. John doesn't hesitate; he doesn't stumble. He walks straight to Blackwell, stops in front of him. They stand eye to eye: John's armor is missing, his surcoat is tattered and battle-worn, his face is shadowed with dirt and his hair plastered with sweat. But his posture is ramrod straight and his gaze is direct. He does not flinch from Blackwell's horror.

"You will not fight," Blackwell says. "If you do not want to see her throat slit, slowly, agonizingly, in front of you. You will not fight," he repeats, "if you wish for her end to be merciful."

"What do you want me to do?" John's voice is steady.

"You?" Blackwell scoffs. "You do nothing." Then, without warning or ceremony, he holds up the Azoth.

And he thrusts it into John's chest.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then, a glow: It begins, like the embers in the fire beneath our feet, spreading from John's chest outward, down his arms into his hands, up his neck into his face. John's eyes go wide, he opens his mouth; nothing comes out but a gasp. His body goes rigid for a beat, two; then he begins to convulse as if someone's shaking him. The light around him turns from white to yellow to red as he burns up with the force of the magic, the force of the stigma leaving his body.

I know this pain; I finally remember it. The heat, the burning, the feeling of being carved inside out and thrust back together. I remember the pain of it, the surety that I was going to die, the pleading because I wanted to die.

Once more I lunge for John, to try to stop this. Caleb is beside me in a blur, his hand clamped around my arm, pulling me back. He's saying something to me but I don't listen, it's drowned out by my screams.

Then, like a torch that's been plunged into water, the light goes out. Red fades back to white and John drops to the floor in a heap, lifeless, his hazel eyes open wide to the ceiling, seeing nothing.

Caleb releases me and I run to John, drop to my knees beside him. I shake him, because that is what you do. I call his name, because that is what you do, too, hoping that somehow this is all a joke, a cruel joke but one nevertheless, that they somehow might groan or cough or roll over or sit up, that they might have cheated death after all.

But this is not what John does. I run my hands across his face, his neck, his pulse points on his wrists, his chest: They are all empty, silent. He is empty. He is silent.

He is dead.

And I have nothing to save him with. I can do nothing for him. Nothing at all. I knot my fists into the front of his shirt, already gone cold, and I begin to sob. But even as I do, I cannot take my eyes off Blackwell, off what happens next.

Blackwell raises the Azoth to the sky, swirling charcoal above us, faster and faster. The blade is coated in blood, dark red and nearly black. But the hilt, the emeralds... they are no longer green. They are yellow and bright as the sun, not twinkling but flashing, growing brighter and brighter with every pa.s.sing moment. He continues chanting, his words picking up speed, pulsing in time with the sky and the light from the Azoth.

A hole opens in the center of the clouds, a window into the now-deepening sky. There, in the center of it: the moon. Half light and half dark, heavy and guiding, luring the spell to its completion.

The Azoth explodes into sunlight. It engulfs us, it fills the room with brightness so white and suffocating I close my eyes, bury my head in John's chest. I can feel it pouring into me, filling me with a heat so intense I feel as if I'm being burned from the inside out. I grip John's body tighter, shielding him with my own as if I can protect him from this, even when I could not protect him before, even though he does not need my protection anymore.

As quickly as the room filled with light, it goes out. Black. Silent. I open my eyes, but I can see nothing before me. Not John, not my own arms around him, not anything or anyone. Just the sound of ragged breathing: mine, perhaps Blackwell's. The others do not breathe at all.

Moments pa.s.s. I don't move; no one around me moves, not that I can hear. Then, slowly, the room begins to illuminate: gently around the edges at first, a ring of purple and red fading inward, giving way to lavender and rose until the room is bathed in a haze of pink. It should be beautiful but there is something horrible about it, as if the air itself is drenched in blood. And in the middle of it all, Blackwell.

He stands stiffly, the way John did. His eyes open wide, an expression of something-pain? Fear? I don't know, I've never seen Blackwell anything other than composed-etched into his face, his arms held stiffly before him. The Azoth, held in his hand just moments before, is gone. All that remains is a scattering of stones along the floor, green again now, but a dull green of decay, as if whatever illuminated them before from within is now dead.

It is as if I'm watching time run backward: Blackwell's skin knits together, growing and stretching over his face; his black veins fading to gray before disappearing altogether. The spell is working. The destruction of the Azoth has combined with the invincibility of the stigma. It is repairing him.

This is the end.

And we are all finished.

There's a shuffle beside me then. I turn to see Nicholas moving toward me, a slow labored crawl. I hold John tighter, shield his body with mine. There is nothing more Nicholas can do to him now, I know. But that doesn't matter.

Nicholas ignores me, he keeps moving toward me, toward us.

I pull back my leg, the same way I did in Fleet prison all those months ago. When Nicholas came to rescue me and I almost didn't trust him, when I almost didn't go with him, when I almost killed him.

I stop.

Look at him closely-really look at him. His dark eyes-blank and unseeing before-are now focused on me, full of clarity and pain and desperation and the closest thing I've seen to fear ever come to pa.s.s along his face.

Whatever spell Nicholas was under, it's gone now. I don't know how: Maybe Blackwell released him; maybe Blackwell's transformation severed the magic. I reach for him again but he shakes his head-once, hard, and once more I pull away. He crawls closer, close enough for me to see how pale he is, how he trembles, how he's left half his blood on the floor behind him. Close enough to John to touch him, his hand fluttering along his neck.

"He's dead," I say, and I could scream with the grief of it. "This wasn't part of your plan, was it? It couldn't be, not this." The sobbing that never really stopped starts up again.

"Elizabeth. Listen to me. Listen." Nicholas's voice is a rattling breath, a choking cough full of blood. "The unity of opposites."

Abruptly, I stop crying. "What?"

"Everything must have its opposite. Up to down. Black to white. Destruction to invincibility." He speaks quickly, his voice urgent; he wants me to understand something I do not. "Everything has an opposite."

"Yes." I lean toward him. His hand is still pressed to John's neck, his trembling fingers cupped behind it as if caressing him. "I know this. I understand-"

Another sharp jerk of his head. "Immortality. It has an opposite, too. Do you hear me? Elizabeth." More coughing, more blood. "Immortality cannot exist without its opposite."

I turn back to Blackwell, still standing in the center of the room, his empty hands still held before him. He presses them against his chest, a frown crossing his now-pale, unscarred face. He looks as if he was expecting to see something he does not, to feel something he does not. How should immortality feel? What is the shape of it, the breath of it?

Or does it not exist at all?

"Immortality has its opposite, too." I whisper it as I finally begin to understand it.

The Azoth, now dead and dusted and gone, gave up its destruction, just as Blackwell planned. The destructive power of it combined with the invincibility of the stigma to transcend them both, just as Blackwell planned.

But what he did not know, what John and Nicholas somehow did, was that immortality does not exist. That it cannot exist: not without death alongside it. That the powers of both became the power of neither, and here Blackwell stands, empty of it all.

Mortal.

"The circle closes its end. That end is for you to make. His end. Do you understand? Do-" Nicholas slumps to the floor then, his hand still clutched around John's neck. His eyes close, and he falls terribly, horribly still.